Quotes from Daniel Kahneman

The emotional tail wags the rational dog

In the economy of action, effort is a cost, and the acquisition of skill is driven by the balance of benefits and costs.

Suggestion and anchoring are both explained by the same automatic operation of System 1.

System noise is inconsistency, and inconsistency damages the credibility of the system.

Henry Faulds, a Scottish physician, published the first scientific paper suggesting the use of fingerprints as an identification technique.

The distinction between two selves is applied to the measurement of well-being, where we find again that what makes the experiencing self happy is not quite the same as what satisfies the remembering self.

group polarization. The basic idea is that when people speak with one another, they often end up at a more extreme point in line with their original inclinations. If, for example, most people in a seven-person group tend to think that opening a new office in Paris would be a pretty good idea, the group is likely to conclude, after discussion, that opening that office would be a terrific idea.

knowing little makes it easier to fit everything you know into a coherent pattern.

Many intelligent and well-informed people were keenly interested in the future of the economy and did not believe a catastrophe was imminent; I infer from this fact that the crisis was not knowable. What is perverse about the use of know in this context is not that some individuals get credit for prescience that they do not deserve. It is that the language implies that the world is more knowable than it is. It helps perpetuate a pernicious illusion.

Resistance to stereotyping is a laudable moral position, but the simplistic idea that the resistance is costless is wrong. The costs are worth paying to achieve a better society, but denying that the costs exist, while satisfying to the soul and politically correct, is not scientifically defensible.

Hindsight is especially unkind to decision makers who act as agents for others—physicians, financial advisers, third-base coaches, CEOs, social workers, diplomats, politicians. We are prone to blame decision makers for good decisions that worked out badly and to give them too little credit for successful moves that appear obvious only after the fact. There is a clear outcome bias. When

the brain is a machine for jumping to conclusions

ideas about politics and economics are a lot like movie stars. If people think that other people like them, such ideas can go far.

Modern tests of working memory require the individual to switch repeatedly between two demanding tasks, retaining the results of one operation while performing the other. People who do well on these tests tend to do well on tests of general intelligence.

Priming effects take many forms. If the idea of EAT is currently on your mind (whether or not you are conscious of it), you will be quicker than usual to recognize the word SOUP when it is spoken in a whisper or presented in a blurry font.

There is a genuine limit on people's ability to assign distinct labels to stimuli on a dimension, and that limit is around seven labels.

the recommendations of Nudge require firms to offer contracts that are sufficiently simple to be read and understood by Human customers.

However, the ability to control attention is not simply a measure of intelligence; measures of efficiency in the control of attention predict performance of air traffic controllers and of Israeli Air Force pilots beyond the effects of intelligence.

to put it differently, you are not always the same person, and you are less consistent over time than you think. But somewhat reassuringly, you are more similar to yourself yesterday than you are to another person today.

A world in which firms compete by offering better products is preferable to one in which the winner is the firm that is best at obfuscation.

Jumping to conclusions is efficient if the conclusions are likely to be correct and the costs of an occasional mistake acceptable, and if the jump saves much time and effort.

Emotional learning may be quick, but what we consider as "expertise" usually takes a long time to develop.

The feelings associated with different activities suggest that another way to improve experience is to switch time from passive leisure, such as TV watching, to more active forms of leisure, including socializing and exercise.

clear, simple, salient, and meaningful disclosures.